A high school basketball tournament on the Northern California coast has become the latest flashpoint in the ongoing protests over police killings of unarmed black men after a school was disinvited because of concerns its players would wear T-shirts printed with the words “I Can’t Breathe” during warmups.

The athletic director at Fort Bragg High School informed his counterpart at Mendocino High School this week that neither the boys nor girls team would be allowed to participate in the three-day tournament hosted by Fort Bragg High starting Monday, Mendocino Unified School District Superintendent Jason Morse said.

Government support for Spain’s scandal-plagued Princess Cristina has waned, with its new parliament spokesman saying she should consider taking herself out of the line of succession after being ordered to stand trial on tax fraud charges.

“Cristina should reflect on whether she should renounce her rights of succession,” said Rafael Hernando in an interview published on Sunday in the newspaper El Mundo.

Tired of seeing white politicians “black up” for a children’s post-Christmas street parade, almost 62,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that Madrid council choose a black man to play the role of Balthazar in the city’s Three Kings cavalcade next week.

Arguing that “it is senseless and unnecessary in this day and age for the king Balthazar to be a white man painted black”, signatories of the petition on change.org have criticised what they see as an offensive and anachronistic practice.

Britain is unprepared for prolonged blackouts, with increased death rates, rising public disorder and high-risk criminals on the loose among the likely consequences if major energy networks are seriously damaged, a secret Government security assessment has found.

The UK’s contingency plans for severe power cuts are based on numerous flawed or untested assumptions and need to be revised, according to documents obtained by the Telegraph.

The Times named Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party ‘Briton of the Year,’ calling him a game-changing politician who broke into and shaped the country’s politics in 2014. The decision prompted a storm of controversy in the media and on Twitter.

Farage has managed to lure many disillusioned voters away from the political establishment and has exploited every opportunity he can – which may mean his party will hold the balance of power in Westminster in the coming election.